The Coronation of Haile Selassie
by Evelyn Waugh 
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In May 2005 Penguin will publish 70 unique titles to celebrate the company's 70th birthday. The titles in the Pocket Penguins series are emblematic of the renowned breadth of quality of the Penguin list and will hark back to Penguin founder Allen Lane's vision of good books for all'. greatest satirical writers of the twentieth century. In this irreverent personal account of the crowning of the last Emperor of Ethiopia who inspired the Rastafarian religion he makes full use of his comic show more genius, brilliantly capturing the bureaucracy, lunacy and passion of a country gripped by coronation fever. show lessTags
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I had somewhat mixed emotions about this book. On the one hand, it is an interesting eyewitness account of a kind of ceremony that is now extinct, and thus is an interesting record. On the other hand, there's an oppressive amount of smarm and condescension in the account that makes it rather unpalatable. One gets the impression Waugh was not pleased with the catering, and was expecting London service in the middle of Africa. I'm not sure I'd recommend this, especially to those who rage against imperialism.
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132+ Works 56,611 Members
Born in Hampstead and educated at Oxford University, Evelyn Waugh came from a literary family. His elder brother, Alec was a novelist, and his father, Arthur Waugh, was the influential head of a large publishing house. Even in his school days, Waugh showed sings of the profound belief in Catholicism and brilliant wit that were to mark his later show more years. Waugh began publishing his novels in the late 1920's. He joined the Royal Marines at the beginning of World War II and was one of the first to volunteer for commando service. In 1944 he survived a plane crash in Yugoslavia and, while hiding in a cave, corrected the proofs of one of his novels. Waugh's early novels, Decline and Fall (1927), Vile Bodies (1930), and A Handful of Dust (1934), established him as one of the funniest and most brilliant satirists the British had seen in years. He was particularly skillful at poking fun at the scramble for prominence among the upper classes and the struggle between the generations. He lived for a while in Hollywood, about which he wrote The Loved One (1948), a scathing attack on the United States's overly sentimental funeral practices. His greatest works, however, are Brideshead Revisited (1945), which has been made into a highly popular television miniseries, and the trilogy Sword of Honor (1965), composed of Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955), and The End of the Battle (1961). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Evelyn Waugh has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
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- Canonical title
- The Coronation of Haile Selassie
- Original publication date
- 1931
- People/Characters
- Haile Selassie
- Important places
- Ethiopia
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 126
- Popularity
- 258,741
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (2.96)
- Languages
- English, Spanish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 3
